Chapter 5
“Do not come outside no matter what. They might hear you downstairs, so don’t make a sound either.”
“D-Did something happen?”
Leandros looked confused when Yeorae grabbed his shoulders and warned him so seriously. Her phone was still vibrating in the dark as if urging her to answer.
“If my sister finds out I’m living with a man, it will be a huge disaster! The whole family will be turned upside down! So no matter what you see, never, ever come out of here. Got it?!”
“Y-You didn’t need to say that. I’ve never gone outside before anyway.”
Even so, Leandros obediently nodded.
Yeorae quickly shoved her feet into her shoes and ran out of the building.
In the meantime, Yeonju was smoking. The ground around her was covered with cigarette butts that had not completely cooled yet.
“I can understand how you got my phone number, but how did you find my address too?”
“Yeorae!”
Yeonju rushed forward, her long brown hair flying behind her, and threw her arms around Yeorae.
The mixed smell of perfume and cigarettes stabbed at Yeorae’s nose. But something else bothered her even more.
Her heartbeat slowed, and it felt as if her chest was turning cold.
“You even went to a treatment center, but you still couldn’t stop drinking…?”
She had thought she could not be disappointed anymore.
But once again, her sister was hurting and tearing at her heart.
Whether Yeonju noticed or not, she leaned against Yeorae with unfocused eyes and grinned.
“How much money do you have? Lend me some.”
“Dating, plastic surgery, or gambling. Which one is it this time? I doubt you’re asking me for job-hunting expenses.”
“You crazy bitch!”
Yeonju staggered and shoved Yeorae hard.
Their conversations were always the same.
Yeorae knew exactly what would happen if she opened her mouth.
But she still spoke coldly.
“Mom and Dad threatened to stop supporting you if you don’t get a job this year, so now you’ve come to bother your younger sister instead. You got out of jail and ate your tofu. Maybe it’s time to grow up.”
Smack!
Before she even finished speaking, a hard slap hit her face and turned her head sharply.
Ah, there’s someone at home…
She touched her cheek.
Her fingernails must have scratched it, because there was blood on her fingers.
Yeorae grabbed her sister by the collar.
“Your grip has gotten much weaker, hasn’t it?”
Then she pushed her sister away and marched back into the building.
A desperate shout telling her not to tell their mother echoed through the alley a moment later.
As expected, Leandros had watched everything through the window.
Passing by his shocked face, Yeorae opened the freezer, grabbed some ice, and poured it into a plastic bag.
Then she sat heavily in a chair, pressed the ice against her cheek, and stared ahead.
“You saw it, right? That’s the second reason I live away from my family.”
“……”
Silence filled the room.
Leandros stood still for a long time, looking at her.
Then he slowly walked over.
He gently moved the ice pack away and cupped her cheek with his cool hand.
After that, he softly pulled her into an embrace.
“……”
The last time she had cried because of something like this was when she was nineteen and secretly cried in the bathroom with the shower running.
After that, she had decided never to shed another tear.
Yet now—
Yeorae buried her face in Leandros’s broad chest.
His clothes slowly became warm with her tears.
* * *
“The first time happened when I was in my third year of middle school. I was fifteen.”
Moonlight fell across the shoulders of the two people sitting against the bed with their legs stretched out.
The ice bag in Yeorae’s hand had already melted and was dripping water onto the floor.
“They say the first time is the hardest. Once she hit me once, it became something she did all the time afterward.”
“…What about your parents?”
“They know. That’s why I purposely applied to a university far away and moved out. If I stayed there, the conflict between me and my sister would turn into a family war. I don’t resent my parents. They really tried hard to improve our relationship.”
Leandros tightly held her hand.
His warmth comforted her more than a hundred words ever could.
“It’s pathetic, but it’s sad too. She wasn’t always like this. No matter how much I think about it, I don’t know where things went wrong…”
Tears started forming again.
Yeorae quickly rubbed her eyes.
A thick finger slipped between hers and intertwined with her hand.
Still holding it, Leandros spoke quietly.
“I have a sibling too. An older twin brother who was born one minute before me.”
“Huh?”
Yeorae’s eyes widened.
That was the last thing she had expected.
“You have a twin?”
“We’re identical twins. From a distance, people often can’t tell us apart. And my brother… well, he doesn’t exactly live an exemplary life. People around him call him a ‘playboy.’”
“A p-playboy…”
Leandros smiled awkwardly at her surprised expression.
Realizing her reaction might make it harder for him to continue, Yeorae quickly calmed her face and looked ahead again.
“My brother was weak from birth. Instead of learning swordsmanship, he learned painting. He was so talented that people called him a genius. He gave up the heir’s position to me very early. Even as a child, he knew he wasn’t the kind of person who could stay tied to one place.”
“That’s interesting. Usually people fight over the heir position, don’t they? Maybe I’ve watched too many dramas…”
“Not necessarily.”
Leandros chuckled as he remembered the dramatic Korean TV series Yeorae had shown him earlier that day.
Hearing his laughter made some of her sadness fade away.
“But a playboy? That’s hard to imagine when you say he looks exactly like you.”
“Well… actually, my brother had many complicated relationships with women even when he was at the Academy. If someone dates many people casually, it’s not surprising that they get a nickname like that. The real problem is that he’s proud of the nickname. We fought a lot because of it.”
“His personality sounds completely different from yours. Most twins are similar in personality too.”
Leandros tightened his grip on her hand.
He neither agreed nor disagreed.
His golden eyelashes lowered gently.
“Thinking about it now, I think his desire for women’s affection comes from our mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Our mother hanged herself in her room on our eighth birthday.”
“What?”
The shocked sound escaped from Yeorae before she could stop it.
Leandros’s expression remained calm, but there was a slight crease between his brows beneath his messy blond hair.
“Our mother was always depressed. We never once saw her smile. But my brother cared for her much more deeply than I did. While I followed our father around, my brother spent most of his time indoors because of his poor health. It happened naturally. So sometimes… I feel sorry for him.”
Eight years old was old enough to remember something like that forever.
Yeorae carefully studied his face.
“What about you? Are you okay?”
“My father taught me never to reveal my true feelings.”
“I’m from another world anyway. Tell me how you really feel. There’s nobody here who can learn your secrets. If I told anyone, they’d just think I was crazy.”
“Hmm…”
Leandros gently rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb as he thought.
Then he began talking about feelings he had hidden away like an old diary locked inside a closet since childhood.
“To be honest, I’m not sure. But if there’s one secret about my brother and me, it’s this. He displays his finished paintings in our mother’s bedroom. And whenever there’s a sunny day, I go there and look at them. For some reason, when I do that, I feel like I’ve become a very small and ordinary boy again.”
“I understand. That happens to me too. This might sound strange, but it happens when I smell certain things. If I smell something from my childhood again, it feels like I’ve gone back to that time.”
Yeorae smiled faintly as she looked at him.
At some point, Leandros had turned his head and was looking at her too.
His face looked like a painting beneath the soft darkness of the night.
And then it happened.
It happened so suddenly.
As if she were being pulled by a magnet, Yeorae was drawn toward him by a force she could not resist.
Their lips touched lightly and then separated.
Leandros’s body instantly stiffened.
Ah.
Only then did Yeorae realize what she had done.
“Um… I-I’m sorry.”
What did I just do?
Her mind went completely blank.
She wanted to make some excuse.
Any excuse.
But the more she tried to think, the more it felt like she might cry again.
Something felt wrong.
Getting slapped by her sister must have affected her more than she realized.
Ever since she cried in Leandros’s arms earlier, her emotions had been completely unstable.
In the end, she tried to run away.
And she would have—
If a large, warm hand had not gently cupped her cheek.
“……”
Leandros let out a quiet sigh and brushed her reddened eyes.
Then he lowered his head.
And kissed her.
